


fake it till you make it (sit in the dark and feel the loss)

by 8sword



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BAMF!Claire, BAMF!Emma, Domestic Castiel/Dean Winchester, Episode: s06e09 Clap Your Hands If You Believe, F/F, Fae & Fairies, Femslash, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, arranged marriage (kind of), fake married (kind of), vague references to dub-con and blood-drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 05:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1928370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8sword/pseuds/8sword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are proof that one can be something other than what one was born to be," Cas said. "Why wouldn't they want you?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vilupe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilupe/gifts).



> For Femlash Friday last week, loversforlycanthropes and I were contemplating arranged marriage!clemma, and she sent me the following scenario.
> 
> "Emma is invited to some sort of monster convention held by actual monsters that want to live normal lives. She is supposed to represent the Amazon relief program that she and cas worked together to create: a sort of victim rescue designed to give Amazon girls that want a normal life a chance to get identities in the human world and learn skills other than killing (because super fast aging does not account for years of knowledge and education that a normal human would have, lucky that Emma was deaged a bit in purgatory and then raised by dean and cas). So she goes to this convention thing but then one of the seven sons of the Lord of the Green March sort of gate crashes (and fairies always gatecrash every one of these things even though they have zero interest in living normal lives) and he is so taken with her that he invites her to the fae realm to be a consort for the Summer Queen's court.  
> And like you never say no to a faery, so Emma is like what do i do???? I DONT WANT TO FUCK FAERIES. And like Sam and Dean share the look and Cas just sighs solemnly and is all like, well.... if you were to pledge your troth to another then the faeries would be honor bound to respect a prior oath. Which translates to fake married but actually married in the faery way and like Claire ends up being the one to do it because she had nothing else to do (and like she was going to let Emma get faery married to some random hunter yeah right.)"
> 
> So of course I wrote something. And of course it got longer than intended.
> 
> Titles from "Clap Your Hands If You Believe" (6.09). The girls are in college.

 

 

They meet at the bunker. It's halfway between Arizona where Claire was staying her usual month over the summer with her grandparents and the hotel in South Dakota where Emma and Cas's Learning to Live Among Humans convention was.

Claire bursts through the iron front door like a storm, her hair a wild mess. She takes the steps down to where Dean and Cas sit at the War Room table three at a time.

"Tell me _one_ more time what happened," she says, eyes flashing dangerously. "And don't say you somehow managed to let Emma be abducted by a pointy-eared douchebag that wants to marry her to consolidate his political interests, because that _better_ not be what you let happen."

"The prince's ears weren't actually pointed," Cas says. "There were ornaments on them to make them appear as if they were so, but the inbreeding within the Seelie court has likely contributed to the disappearance of that trait. Pointed auricles are controlled by a dominant allele."

Dean has his hand over his face. Claire is turning steadily whiter and whiter, her eyes burning like pits of St. Elmo's fire in her face. _She_ looks like the wrathful angel, right now.

She spins on Dean. "How could you let this happen?"

"Claire," Cas says sharply. "Dean is just as upset as you are. Don't--"

Dean shoves to his feet. He grabs his phone from under the books he and Cas have been rifling furiously through on the table, and he strides out of the room.

Claire and Cas stare at him. Then, biting her lip, Claire says, "I'll be back," and heads in the opposite direction.

 

When she comes back from the armory several minutes later, an angel blade strapped to either arm, her forearm on her left and her upper arm on her right, Dean is back at the table with Cas. They both have ancient, leather-bound tomes open in front of them, and Cas has his reading glasses on, the wire-rimmed frames gleaming in the yellow lamplight.

Claire drops her backpack onto the table with a heavy thud. There's a few clanks, too, betraying the other weaponry she's stuffed inside it. "What've you found?"

"Nothing, yet." Castiel's voice is terse. He closes the book in front of him and pulls over a new one.

Claire looks over at Dean. He holds up his phone. She raises her eyebrow at him, confused.

"Charlie," he says in explanation. "She'll be here in thirty minutes. I figured if anyone could help us figure out how to fuck over a fairy, it'd be her."

Claire's muscles relax, a little.

 

"Unfortunately," says Charlie when she gets to the bunker half an hour later. "Any chances I had of getting some intimate fairy knowledge got shut down by Loyal Handmaiden over here. However--" She lowers the suitcase she dragged into the bunker onto the ground, flat, and unzips the top. "I'm pretty sure I can see where this plotline is going, and it ends in fairy world, so. You're going to need to play the part."

She pulls out a swathe of fabric. It's soft leather, like Dean's handmaiden Moondoor gear, only a few shades lighter. There's some chainmail like his to go with it, and sturdy-looking boots, and a sheathed, wicked-looking sword on a belt to go around her waist.

Claire picks up the sword and its belt, testing the fit around her hips. "I don't know how to use this."

"I think you'll find Emma does," Charlie says, with a waggle of her eyebrows, and Claire blinks, glancing over at Dean, who looks just as surprised.

"Seriously?" Charlie looks back and forth between them. "The girl was raised as an Amazon, you don't think they taught her how to use a sword?"

"Dean."

Their heads all swing toward Cas. He has his glasses held close to his nose with a finger, and he's peering at a small, brown-bound book, bending it flat open on the table so he can read something in the margin nearest to the spine.

"There is a warning here," he says. "In fae law, ownership is contingent upon consent. If an object or being belongs to an individual, possession cannot be transferred without the owner's consent."

Dean is shaking his head, mouth tight. "None of us _own_ Emma."

"Actually," Cas looks up at him, "were she still under the age of seventeen she would still be considered under your possession, as you are her parent. Now that she is no longer that the fae consider to be a child, however, the only form of ownership they would consider her bound by is…"

Charlie's eyes are round. "Oooh," she says. "I know where this is going. Marriage. She has to be married, doesn't she?"

Cas nods.

"Well, we're fucked there, too!" Dean explodes. He throws his hands up. "She's not married!"

"No," Cas says. "But if we could deceive the faeries into believing that she was already betrothed…"

Dean's eyes widen. He spins, shoving the books on the table out of the way as he tries to find his phone beneath them. "Where's Ajax? I knew that fucker had to end up being good for something--"

"He's in Hong Kong," Claire says. "He's at some engineering summit, there's no way he'd get here in time."

"It wouldn't work anyway," Cas says, and Claire and Dean both cast him _why the hell not_ looks, but Charlie distracts them both, when she says suddenly, "What about Claire?"

They all look at her. She looks back, eyes wide and serious. "What?" she says, mostly to Dean. "It could work. Faeries don't care about the girl-girl guy-guy thing, you saw Gilda and me--"

Dean throws up a hand. "Stop. Setting _aside_ the fact that they're sisters--"

"Not really," Claire says.

Dean casts her a swift, betrayed glance. Which--okay, Claire understands he has brother issues, but that's really not what's going on here.

"You know what I mean," she says. "Dean. We're not biologically related. We could get married."

"Well," says Charlie, "if the government got its head out of its ass, you could." She considers. "And, you know, considering _Game of Thrones_ , even if you were sis--"

"Could we FOCUS for a minute?" Dean cries. "Supposing that for whatever reason Claire was going to--like--" He waves his hand instead of saying it. "How the hell is she going to get to faerie land and convince them?"

"That's the easy part." Cas pushes his glasses up on his nose again, riffling a few pages back in the book. "There's a spell here to open a portal to the Faerie Court using a possession of the Taken Individual--that's Emma," he adds, as if any of them needed that clarification. "I'm certain we have all the ingredients it requires in the armory and storeroom. Dean, go fetch something of Emma's from her room. Claire, you come help me. Charlie--"

"I'll get the stuff from the armory," Charlie says. "You guys go to the storeroom. I'll whistle if the suits of armor come to life again."

She scampers off. Dean makes to follow her, but pauses at the door, hand on the jamb. "So we're really doing this--?" He looks uncertain, casting Claire a glance, like she's going to say _no, I'm not willing to fake marry Emma to save her from a life of being some douchebag fairy's Sansa Stark._

"We're really doing it," she says firmly.

Dean inhales. Then nods and jogs out of the room.

Claire follows Cas down the hall and the short staircase to the storeroom. It strikes her, for a moment, how similar their strides have become in the handful of years she's lived with them; both purposeful, heavy, falling into step, and for a fleeting, suspended, terrifying moment, she wonders if they've been in step ever since he was inside her, all those years ago.

Then the moment falls, and breaks, spilling like ice cubes shattering when they fall out of the ice dispenser and skitter across the floor to the furthest edges of the kitchen, and she's ducking into the storeroom after Cas, heading down the aisle of boxes he directs her toward. Gryphon feather, and salamander's essence, and toenail of a firstborn adolescent male.

Ten minutes later, Cas has checked everything off the paper in his hand, and Claire's climbing down off the ladder she used to reach the teenage boy toenail, swiping dust out of her face.

Cas catches her hand as she steps onto the floor. There is something in his, a slip of paper.

"Take this," he says. His eyes are hot on her face, searching but flickering. Like he doesn't want to hold eye contact with her too long lest she read something through them. "Read it when you are there. You have--"

"Cas?" Dean's voice bounces down the short staircase. "Claire?"

"--a choice," Cas says quickly, lowly. "You always have a choice, Claire."

Then he lets go, and turns to meet Dean's eyes as Dean leans into the doorway.

"I've got the stuff," he says, holding up one of Emma's slippers, a blue one made to look like Stitch.

"You couldn't pick something more portable?" Cas says.

"These are her favorite slippers!"

Claire doesn't hear what Cas says in reply; he and Dean have already rounded the sharp bend in the hallway that leads to the war room. She licks her lip and looks down at the folded-up bit of paper in her hand.

A sudden memory of her father pushes into her mind, the low cadence of his voice as he read her the story of Adam and Eve, Eve listening to the snake.

She reaches inside her shirt and stuffs the paper in her bra.

 

"I have one more spell," Cas says when they're all gathered, Claire changed into her handmaiden costume from Charlie with her hair swept up into a French braid and fastened with several iron hairpins that have hidden buttons to lengthen them into short but very sharp blades. ("What kind of character were you cosplaying with those?" Dean said in awe and envy, and Charlie smirked and refused to tell.)

Claire casts him a sharp glance. He returns it steadily.

"It is, of course, your choice," he says, and she remembers what he said in the storeroom, _You always have a choice_. "I am not sure if merely stating your betrothal will be enough to convince the fae that you and Emma are bound to each other in ownership. I found a spell that will forge a link that may be able to deceive them."

"What kind of link?" Dean says immediately.

Cas sighs. "It involves their souls."

"No." Dean's voice is a whip. "No way."

"Dean--"

"It's my choice," Claire says loudly. She steps forward, toward Cas. "What do I have to do?"

"Claire!" Dean spins on her. "You of all people--"

"Exactly," she says. "Me of all people. I know what getting my soul messed with is like, and I know who I'm willing to let it be messed with for."

Dean doesn't say anything. Just stares at her, his eyes searching and green, and Claire turns back to Cas.

He takes her hand. She holds it extended as he wraps a strand of something around it. She recognizes it, the slight curl to it at the end, the length: it's Emma's hair.

He reaches behind him, into a bowl, and removes his thumb from it, wet and dripping with something he swipes across her pulse, over the strand.

There's a brief, queer sensation, like her pulse is suddenly a butterfly trying to flutter out from under the skin of her wrist. Then it quiets, and slowly falls still, like it's curling back in on itself, weaving into a cocoon. She feels a weird, indefinable…pressure, like when a plane is taking off and inside the cabin, you can feel your ears getting close to popping, except the pressure isn't in her ears, it's… She's not sure where it is.

She opens her eyes, only then realizing that she had shut them in the first place. And blinks, because on her wrist where the strand of hair was, there is now a small, spider-shaped scar that is nearly the twin of Emma's.

Someone behind her lets out a breath. She looks back to see Charlie staring at the mark, and Dean staring at it just an intently, except he looks torn instead of awed.

Their eyes meet. His mouth tightens.

She turns back to Cas. Hefts her bag over her shoulder.

"All right," she says. "Beam me up, Scotty."


	2. Chapter 2

The room Emma is in is big and white and airy. The ceiling is so high above her she can barely see it, and the stupidly huge bed in the center of the room looks like it's growing straight out of a tree, the four-poster bed frame made of twisting branches that stretch out to hold a leafy canopy over the mattress, curtains of moss hanging down around it. It looks like something out of Lord of the Rings.

Emma might be able to appreciate it a little more if the room had a door. Or if she hadn't been, you know, shoved in there without her will by a fairy prince who stood up in the middle of the Q&A section of her panel and asked her to become his consort and accompany him back to his realm.

"Uh, dude," she'd said into the awkward silence that followed. And looked back and forth among her fellow three panelists up at the table, looking for some sort of support. They'd all seemed as shocked as her, though. "That's not…really a relevant question."

"It's not really a question," he'd said. "It's more a…informing you what I plan to do."

And he'd disappeared from his seat in the front row. And re-appeared behind her.

His hand had curled around her neck, and the next thing Emma knew, they were both standing in a sunlit throne room, where a gorgeous lady sitting in one of the thrones had looked regally at Emma and then made a motion with her hand. Which was when Emma found herself in here, in a practically sheer white dress with a bone-leather corset-thing squeezing her boobs so hard they feel like they're going to snap her ribcage in half and every bit of hair magically gone except for her eyebrows and the hair on her head.

She presses her knees together unconsciously. Turns her face further away from the bed.

"You stupid idiot," she says. It makes her feel a little better, hearing her voice break the silence of the huge, quiet room. "Why didn't you go to Hong Kong with Ajax? Huh?"

" _Come with me_ ," she says, mimicking Ajax's best wheedling voice. " _Come with me on the engineering study abroad trip, Emma, we'll be roomies and marathon Orphan Black and make sweet, sweet robots all night!_ "

"No, Ajax," she shifts back to her usual voice, pitched higher to indicate her unbelievable stupidity. "I told Cas I'd go to his convention thing with him this summer, he's counting on me--"

Which was total bullshit. It was the other way around: Cas was the one Emma begged to accompany her to the convention for moral support. The administrators contacted her through Garth, and Emma's first reaction to the phone call was to throw down the phone and run outside and climb into a tree and never come down.

But Cas came out, and sat under the tree, and waited there until Emma finally acknowledged his presence with a mumbled, "Why would they want _me_?"

"You are proof that one can be something other than what one was born to be," Cas said. "Why wouldn't they want you?"

"I didn't do anything," she said, because she hadn't. She'd just gone to her dad and asked him to help her and been lucky enough that he said _yes_.

"You continue to do something every day," Cas said. "Being who you are is a decision that you make every moment."

Emma slithered down out of the tree. Crawled under Cas's arm, and sat there against him until Dean called them in for dinner.

She bites her lip.

She might never sit in that tree again. Never sit with Cas in the backyard, or cannonball onto Claire's bed while she's doing homework, or sit at the table peeling vegetables for dinner with Dean.

She bites her lip harder.

"Come now, Emma. It's not so bad."

She whirls. The fairy prince is behind her. He's leaning against the foot of the bed, arms crossed lazily. There are flowers and little tendrils of vines blooming at his boots, twining up his ankles nearly to his knees; he's been sitting here at least a few minutes for that many to have grown up around him, which means he's been watching her pace around in this stupid see-through dress and talk to herself.

She wants to be angry, but there's more fear rushing through her than rage.

He smiles like he can smell it. Pushes forward off the bed. "Our mother wishes to have an audience with you."

" _Your_ mother," Emma spits. She tries not to flinch back as he steps closer. "Not mine."

His smile doesn't widen, but it intensifies, somehow. His eyes are very green--not light like her dad's but dark, the green of things that are alive, things that creep and grow and choke you. They're the green of poison. "She'll be your mother, too, soon enough."

"I have a mom," Emma snaps. "And she's not some lady with fucking begonias for ears."

"Do you?" says the prince. "Because I was under the impression, based on that sob story you were peddling for those beasts at the convention, that your mother discarded you like a piece of trash."

Red filters across Emma's vision. She hears the prince catch his breath, and then there's a hand cupping her face. She blinks, glaring, and tries to wrench away, but his hand holds her jaw fast. He's studying her. Her eyes are red and yellow in his big black pupils inside the green.

Then he opens his fingers, releasing her. Emma yanks backward, retreating until her shoulder blades hit the wall.

She spits at his feet. "If I'm such trash, what're you trying to marry me for?"

The prince presses his boot over the saliva on the floor. Crimson roses spring up around the leather. Their perfume fills the air, thick and strong. "Allow me to enlighten you about something."

He steps closer. Emma's eyes are, somehow, glued to the progress of his feet. The rose stems continuing to spill from beneath them, curling toward her like an inexorable tide. They grow, and curl, and thorns slide from the stems. They grow, and curl, and wind around Emma's ankles.

The prince's boots are toe-to-toe with her feet, now. His breath is on her skin. "I don't give a damn about your matrilineage."

Up her legs. Thorns stinging and dragging. Up her waist, and her arms and neck, until there is a sharp bite at the corner of her mouth.

The breath of a summer breeze. And then a warmer tongue, licking across the sting. "It's your father's blood I'm interested in."

He pulls back. Takes some of the perfume with him, and suddenly, Emma can breathe again. Almost. Air stinging the side of her mouth.

She feels weak. Hot and dazed like she's been lying in the sun too long. She tries to pull away. Tries to push upright as he leads her forward, her arm tucked inside his.

"What's," she hears her voice as if from a distance, "special…about…"

"It turns out," says the prince, "the blood of an archangel's vessel is very--how should I put it?--nutritious."

They round a corner. "My father had a taste of it. And afterward, his magic grew so fierce he conquered three lords of the Green March."

Emma's arm is throbbing, tucked against his. It feels strangely like something is trying to get out. Her blood beating at the inside of her Harmonia mark. Her fangs are down, descended. She remembers candlelight, the taste of milk and flesh.

"Isn't there iron in blood?" she says muzzily. "How can you drink it?"

"Very--" He drags his thumb down the pulse pounding in her throat, "carefully."

Her blood beats harder against her Mark. Emma feels, suddenly, clearer. She licks her lips.

"You know," she says. "Don't you think that--that if I'm the blood of an archangel's vessel or whatever, the angels will get mad if you keep me here?" She licks her lips again, juts out her chin. "They'll come for me."

The prince gives her a pitying look. "No one came for your father," he says. "And no one is coming for you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

Emma waits until they turn into the next hallway. Then she closes her hand around the prince's wrist and wrenches it behind him.

His elbow cracks. A feral grin flickers across Emma's face--then roots burst from the flooring beneath her and seize her arms. They choke her wrists until her fingers spasm open.

The prince shakes out his arm. It flops, uselessly, for a minute before it straightens, the bones pulling back into place with a pop. His nostrils flare as he looks at it, and then at her.

"Come," he says tersely.

The roots pull her arms tight behind her, a straitjacket. Then they wrench up out of the floor and seize her by the ankles, too, and begin to lumber after the prince down the hallway.

Emma's face burns in humiliation. Burns hotter when they reach a pair of towering, flung-open wooden doors and walk through them into the throne room from before.

The flower-eared queen in the throne looks up. There is someone standing before her at the foot of her dais.

The queen's eyes travel over the prince and Emma. Her mouth quirks in the suggestion of a smile. "What excellent timing."

The person in front of the queen's throne turns.

Emma's mouth drops open. "Cla--?!"

She recognizes the expression on Claire's face immediately. It's her _shut up and let me do the talking_ face. It gives way to tremendous, icy fury as she takes in Emma's restraints.

She turns back to the queen. "Release her. Immediately."

The queen looks amused. "Pray tell, traveler, who are you to command a queen?"

Claire takes one step up the dais. The faerie guards on either side of the throne unsheathe their swords in warning, but Claire ignores them. "I am the vessel of the seraph Castiel."

Whispers rise from the courtiers on either side of the vast room.

The queen's eyes narrow. "We know of the angel Castiel."

"Then you know his wrath." Claire's arms hang loose and relaxed at her sides; light gleams off the edges of the angel blades strapped to them, and for a minute, they seem red. "Do you wish to discover how many of his predilections I have absorbed?"

The whispers falter. Silence hangs in the air.

Then the queen flicks a finger. Emma drops to the ground with a thud. The roots recede from her arms and legs, creeping back beneath the leaf-covered floor.

Claire doesn't move. "Castiel would be displeased to see my betrothed treated with such disrespect."

Emma blinks.

"She has been treated with the utmost respect," the queen counters. "As befits the betrothed of Our Crown Prince."

Claire takes another step up the dais. The guards begin to move forward now, and Emma wonders at how Claire, who when all is said and done is nothing but human flesh and bone, can act as if she is the equal of these immortals.

"I was not aware," she says, "that fairy law permitted its spawn to lay claims to those upon whom claims have already been staked."

"Highness," the prince says loudly. "There is no claim on the Amazon. She is--"

Claire turns. Her eyes meet Emma's and then sweep down to her wrist. Emma turns it over, feeling her blood pounding in it all over again. Claire pulls down her own sleeve and shows--Emma gapes--a matching Harmonia mark there.

Gasps travel through the courtiers on either side of the room. Claire stares them all down, turning to display her Mark for them to see, and Emma stares at Claire. Blood is beating in her ears, now.

"There is a claim," Claire says. "There has always been a claim. Emma is not yours to take."

The whispers grow louder. The queen is sitting forward in her seat. "Enough!" she snaps. "We will consult with Our counsel."

"Mother--" the prince begins.

"Enough!" the queen shouts again, voice and eyes icy. She turns toward Claire and Emma and snaps her fingers--

 

And they're back in the room with the tree bed. Staring at each other.

Emma's knees buckle. "Holy _shit_."

Claire doesn't say anything. She turns one way, then another, taking in the room. Then, her hand falling from the blade on her arm, she drops down before Emma and wraps her arms around her.

"Holy shit," Emma says again, into the chain mail hanging around Claire's neck. "Holy shit."

"Are you okay?" Claire doesn't pull back, but Emma feels her fingers curling into the sheer, gauze-like fabric of the lame gown she's wearing. "Did they--?"

Emma laughs, only a little hysterically. "They only shaved me everywhere. Or plucked. Or waxed. I have no idea. Oh my God. _Claire_. What are you doing here?!"

Claire finally pulls back, smiling teasingly. "What, did you think we were just going to leave you here?" She shrugs off her knapsack. "Hang on, I've got--"

Emma bursts into tears.

Claire looks at her in shock.

"Sorry--sorry." Emma digs the heels of her hands into her eyes. Tries to swallow.

_What, did you think we were just going to leave you here?_

Claire wraps an arm around her again. Holds her as she shakes with a few more stupid sobs, and then, when she's stopped gasping for breath, she leans away to reach into her knapsack. She pulls out--

A disbelieving hiccup of laughter escapes Emma. Claire glances up at her as she pushes the Stitch slipper onto Emma's thorn-scratched foot.

"Do I have to say it?"

Her voice is stern. Emma hiccup-sob-laughs again, and shakes her head.

 _Ohana_ , Claire says anyway, and presses a fierce kiss to the top of Emma's head.

Emma melts into it. Squeezes her eyes shut, for another minute, and inhales the smell of fake leather and sweaty Claire instead of rose petals and soil.

Then she pushes away.

" _Betrothed_?" she says expectantly.

Claire pointedly ignores her. Goes back to pulling things out of the knapsack again. "Charlie sent this for you to wear. She thought it would give you some…authenticity."

Emma stares at the Wonder Woman cosplay costume Claire is holding out to her. "Um."

Claire considers the metal brassiere portion of it. "I don't think your boobs are going to fit."

"Ya think?" Emma says weakly. A little overwhelmed by the thought that apparently, Charlie is in on the plan to rescue her, and also by the fact that Claire is, right now, right in front of her, pulling off her leather tunic. "What're you doing?"

"I'll wear the Wonder Woman outfit," Claire says. "You can wear this." She starts to strip off the leggings, too. Emma looks away.

"Emma," Claire says. "The chaste act is cute and all, but these faeries are supposed to think we're fucking."

Emma's face explodes in heat. Before she can say anything to the effect of _and why the hell is that, exactly?_ Claire's bra lands on her face, still warm from her skin. She sputters, and pushes it off, turning her back to start taking off her own stupid gossamer thing. Her nipples are ridiculously hard, and--

A scrap of paper's on the floor next to her bare foot. She squats to pick it up, arm held across her chest to keep her breasts at least partially covered. "What's…"

Claire turns. "What?" She's already in the Wonder Woman outfit, looking composed and glorious as usual, fastening the fake metal bracelets around her wrists above the sword-straps.

Emma doesn't say anything. She's opened the paper, and her eyes are huge.

**_The spell to bind your souls may not be enough. It is possible that the fae will only accept the claim of ownership if there has been consummation._ **

It's Cas's handwriting. She looks up at Claire. "What. Is he. Talking about."

Claire takes the paper from her. Reads it. Her expression doesn't change, but Emma feels a ripple of _something_.

Claire holds up her wrist, the one with the Harmonia mark carved into her smooth skin. "He cast a spell to bind us so that the fae would think we're engaged or whatever."

Emma remembers the weird feeling in her wrist. Her hand goes there automatically, the heel of her palm pressing against her pulse. Amusement filters through her--

"Oh my God," she says. "Is that YOU?"

The amusement intensifies. Claire says, _Yeah, probably._

Emma shrieks and jumps. "You're talking in my head!"

Exasperation colors the amusement now. "I've been doing it since I got here. Did you seriously just notice?"

"You weren't doing it before."

"Uh, yeah I was," Claire retorts. " 'Shut up and let me do the talking?' Sound familiar?"

"You didn't _say_ that. That was just your shut up and let me do the talking face."

Claire huffs. "How do you think I knew you were about to say something?"

"You always know when I'm about to say something!" Emma exclaims. "That's what you do, you read minds!"

 _Just_ your _mind,_ comes the thought, and Emma squawks again, throws her hands over her ears. "Stop!" she shouts. _Jerk-face._

_Assbutt._

Emma glowers. _Booger-breath._

"Seriously?" Claire says. "Telepathic communication, and you're going to waste it on insults?"

Emma stamps a foot. It feels a little undignified with a slipper made to look like a blue Alien on her foot, but she plows on. "How could you be so stupid! What if this isn't reversible?"

"Then it's not reversible." Claire shrugs. "Big deal. What's worse--me getting stuck with you for life, or you getting forced to marry some elf prince who decided he wants to add an Amazon to his collection?"

Emma mutters something. Claire's eyes widen, then narrow. She says dangerously, " _Excuse_ me?"

"I _said_ ," Emma says, loud and deliberate, "the first one."

Silence drops into the air between them.

"You don't believe that," Claire says after a minute. "Don't say something like that when you know it's not true."

"Isn't it?" Emma says. "At least he's something supernatural. You're--"

"Weak?" Claire says. "Useless? A girl? What? What am I, Emma?"

"You're human!" Emma shouts. "And I'm _not_! When are you going to get that through your head? All this--" She gestures uselessly, "family, college, internships--all that crap?! It's all pretend for me! Eventually you're going to go get a job and have a family, and I'm going to--"

"To what?"

Emma shrugs. Closes her hand around the sword at her belt and turns away.

"Leave Dean? Cas?" Claire steps toward her. "Me?"

A snort. "I think we both know I'm not going to be the one doing the leaving."

"Do we?" Claire says. "Because last I checked, you were the one who went to Louisiana when Dean came for me and Cas. You were the one who went and bought a bus ticket to Seattle when those hunter kids came to visit."

"You know who I wasn't? I wasn't the one who ran off to fucking _Spain_ \--"

"I come _back_ ," Claire says. "I'm here, now." She grabs the hilt of Emma's sword, below her fingers. _How much clearer can I be?_

"Amazon."

They both spin. They are, suddenly, back in the throne room.

Emma's eyes meet Claire's. Claire's widen in a split second of warning. Emma spins, and, with Charlie's sword, cleanly lops off all dozen of the pale white roots bursting from the ground to grab her. No sooner are they falling to the ground than she whirls back around, just in time to slam the sword's edge against the prince's as he appears behind her.

They dance backward across the throne room, movements nearly too quick for Claire to see. The gathered courtiers scatter before them, only a tall black-cloaked figure with a stag's skull remaining still as the prince lunges, and Emma ducks, and nearly slices his legs at the ankles.

The prince lets out a shout of laughter. Emma snarls in reply, and spins again to slice through the fresh spray of rose vines that shoot out to ensnare her.

Claire feels useless. She unsheathes one of her blades and looks around, but the courtiers are simply watching, entranced, and the queen is making no move to interfere, cheek propped on her pale hand like the swordfight before her is only a mildly entertaining distraction.

A hand seizes Claire's shoulder. She's spun, hand tightening around the angel blade, and the stag's skull is right above her.

She yanks back, making to scream, but its black cloak is suddenly sweeping over her, swallowing her, even as the same time that the blood in her wrist gives a fierce, howling throb--

 

"Quickly," pants a voice. Claire blinks, her eyes adjusting to the darkness and the tiny ball of soft white light that floats inside it. There's a woman across from her, curly-haired and pointy-eared, and beside her, Emma, eyes red and yellow and startled. "Quickly, one of you, cut yourselves."

Claire's eyes meet Emma's yellow ones. "Who are you?" she says to the woman without looking away.

"A friend," the fairy says. "The spell needs blood, and I can only keep us hidden from the Queen for so long; please, quickly--!"

Emma closes her hand over the edge of the sword in her hand. Claire sees, with a startled, exuberant twist of dark satisfaction, that it's already gleaming, dark with blood. Her eyes meet Emma's again.

"Thank you," breathes the fairy. She pulls a small bowl from the folds of her black cloak--Claire recognizes it with a sharp intake of breath--and lets Emma's blood drip into it, blows. Sparks sputter up and then begin to burn, and Emma pulls back her hand and Claire grips it.

The fairy pulls a locket from around her neck, under the robe. It's small and gold, and coiled inside it is a single strand of hair that glows red in the small flame inside the bowl.

The fairy gazes at it. Then she closes her eyes and drops it into the bowl.

The fire bursts. And with it, everything else.

 

They crash into a neon-lit parking lot. A pair of headlights swerve, and tires screech, and a horn blares. Emma's hand seizes the back of Claire's costume and hauls her backward. Into grass, as the car that nearly hit them accelerates out into the road, engine loud and angry.

Claire tries to blink away the afterimage of its headlights. She has no idea where they are.

"Hollow Field Motel," Emma says numbly. She lowers her gaze from the neon sign above them. "Claire. What. Just. Happened."

"I don't know," Claire says tersely. "But I'm in a Wonder Woman costume, and you're holding a sword. We should probably get out of the light."

They dart to the corner of the tree-enclosed parking lot. Only a handful of cars are present, most of them closer to the office-end of the long motel building. Most of the rooms' curtains are closed, only one window flickering from the shifting lights of a TV inside.

Emma nods at the last door on the side of the building, where no cars are parked. "Any chance you brought a lock pick?"

Claire reaches inside her French braid and pulls out several bobby pins. They dart from the trees to the motel breezeway. Emma crouches in front of the door, shoving her sword back into its sheath, and starts to work on the old-fashioned lock as Claire leans against the wall next to her, crossing her arms over her stupid metal brassiere.

Sweat is trickling down the backs of both of their necks by the time the lock clicks and gives way. Emma stands, legs prickling with pins and needles as blood flows back into her feet, and pulls Claire after her into the dark room.

It smells musty and wonderful. Claire shuts the door behind them as Emma feels her way across the room, cursing when she stubs her toe on one of the beds. Claire hears her turn on the bathroom light, the meager white glow spilling into the room, just enough to dispel the pitch darkness, not strong enough to be seen through the cheap curtains and alert someone who knows the room shouldn't be occupied.

She starts from digging in her knapsack for the anti-fairy sigils Cas copied down from her when she feels the sting of pain in her wrist. "Emma--"

Emma shakes her head. "Wards, right?" She's holding her bleeding hand over the ice bucket on the bathroom counter, massaging blood out of it in a stream much steadier than Claire's comfortable with. She nudges past her into the bathroom and swipes one of the stiff washcloths from the towel rack, shoves it into Emma's bleeding hand and takes the ice bucket. Goes back into the motel room proper and digs out the paper, starts to paint the linear wards across the walls with Emma's cooling blood.

She hears the water start to run in the sink. Hears the bathroom door close and then, a few minutes later, open. She glances back over her shoulder.

Emma's got one of the washcloths knotted around her hand. She's also holding something purple in it.

She holds it up for Claire to see. It's a purple hairbrush. And it's full of bright red hair.

Their eyes meet.

"You think?" Emma says.

_Faeries don't care about the girl-girl guy-guy thing, you saw Gilda and me--_

Claire rubs Emma's blood off on her leg. She walks around the closest bed to the nightstand, where the phone sits next to a pad of motel stationery.

Dean picks up on the second ring. "Who is this?"

Claire pushes the phone at Emma, who's come to sit across from her on the other bed. She takes it and goes, "Dad?"

Her voice is small, suddenly, and Claire puts the ice bucket down, sits on one of Emma's knees. It's bony and hard and digs into her butt.

"Emma?" she hears Dean rasp. "You okay, kid?"

"Yeah," Emma whispers. Her forehead digs into the back of Claire's shoulder. "Claire came'n got me."

"Thank fuck," Dean says. "God, God, thank fuck. Where are you? Where are you girls?"

"Hollow Field Motel." Emma reads the stationery Claire pushes at her. "Winfield, Kansas. Room--?"

"24," Claire says.

"24," Emma echoes.

"We'll be there in two hours," Dean says, as, in the background, Charlie exclaims, _Hey, that's where I was last night_. "Don't move. You hear me?"

"Winfield is four hours away according to Mapquest, Dean--"

"Three hours, then--"

"Put down the phone so we can leave--" That's Cas.

"No, I'm staying on the phone with them till we get there--"

"Dean--" Cas again, sounding exasperated. There's the sound of a scuffle, and then Cas's voice in the phone, louder. "Claire, did you ward the room?"

Claire takes the phone from Emma. "Yes."

"Gimme the _phone_ , Cas--"

"We'll see you when you get here," Claire says, and stands from Emma's knee to put the phone back in its cradle. Then she sits back down on the bed, next to Emma this time, their knees touching where their legs dangle from the side of the bed.

They sit in the dim light from the half-open bathroom doorway for a while. Until the noisy air conditioning unit at the window kicks in.

Emma draws her legs up under her, plush slipper brushing Claire's skin. "So you think that was Gilda?"

"Probably." Between the red hair, and the hairbrush, and the fact that Charlie was here, in this motel room last night, there doesn't really seem to be any other explanation. The real question is--

"Why didn't she come back with us?"

Claire looks over at her.

"It seemed like she misses Charlie." Emma's chin is digging into her knees, her arms wrapped around her legs. "If that locket was anything to go by. So why didn't she…"

Her eyes drift to Claire's.

"Come back?" Claire finishes. When Emma nods, she shrugs. "Maybe she couldn't." She pauses pointedly. "Or maybe she was a coward."

Emma bristles. "Or _maybe_ ," she says, "she was trying to protect her."

" _Maybe_ she doesn't need to be protected."

Emma shoves to her feet.

"Anyway," she says. Her voice is airy, the tone she inherited from Dean, that sweeps things under the rug when they don't want to deal with them. "Guess it's your lucky day, Novak. You don't have to fuck me after all."

Claire's jaw clenches. She glares down at the bracelets on her wrists for a minute, turning them back and forth, and then she takes a deep breath. "Good."

Emma's hurt shoots through them both. "Good," she echoes.

Claire glares harder. "You know why?"

"No," Emma snaps.

"Because I don't want to fuck you," Claire says. She looks up, their eyes meeting. "I want to kiss you."

Emma's jaw drops open. Claire pushes to her feet, sliding off the bed. "And make sweet, sweet robots with you."

Emma's eyes go as wide as her mouth. A half mortified, half disbelieving laugh escapes her.

Claire manages a nervous half-smile. Then she takes another deep breath. Leans closer. Braces her hand on the comforter next to Emma's hip.

Butterflies explode inside her stomach when Emma covers it with her own.

Their mouths meet. Warm and soft and almost forgotten because the thoughts in Emma's head, and in her own, are so loud, wild heartbeats like a stampede.

Emma pulls back. Her eyes are still closed. "Who had the _Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron_ thought? Was that you?"

"No, I think I was the Mufasa one," Claire says with a laugh, and lets her head fall forward so that their foreheads are resting against each other. Emma groans.

"This is not how I pictured kissing you going," she informs Claire.

Claire nips at the side of her mouth. It feels thrillingly, unbelievably perfect. Everything is suddenly okay. More than okay, even.

"You thought about kissing me?" she murmurs. Doesn't wait for an answer--doesn't need to. "Ah."

Emma flushes. "This mind-reading thing is getting real old real fast," she mutters.

"You're not using it to your advantage." Claire shifts enough to cup Emma's hot cheek in one hand and concentrates. Thinks about some of the things _she_ 's pictured doing with Emma.

She can feel the warmth of Emma's blush traveling from her neck to her face beneath her fingers. "Oh."

"Oh," Claire agrees, and kisses the side of Emma's mouth again. Emma holds Claire's jaw in return, and turns her head and opens her mouth and _oh_.

It all becomes rather a mess after that, of warm wet tongues and sliding lips and shifting backward, onto the cool-slippery fabric of the comforter. Emma's still wearing her Stitch slipper, and she sits back on her haunches, goes to pull it off when she crawls over Claire with knees on either side of Claire's waist, but Claire catches her ankle, stops her from removing it. Pulls Emma back down, instead, and cups her jaw again as they lick into each other's mouths, tongues tracing teeth and gums and sheathed fangs.

Emma freezes as Claire's hands slide lower. "Wait--if we--"

"What?" Claire breathes into her skin.

"Con-consummate," Emma manages as Claire starts to exhale back and forth along the bared skin beneath her tunic, tiny little breathes that raise the fine hairs there, "the spell--"

Claire pulls back. Looks down at Emma. "You know my decision."

Emma's eyes search hers. Desperate, yellow, red. "You're _sure_." It's a question.

"I came for you," Claire says. "I will _always_ come for you." She breaks into a sudden, stupid smirk. "In all the ways that count."

Emma kicks her. Claire grins harder, and rolls them over, and sweeps her splayed hands up Emma from her thighs over the bones of her hips up over the belt of her sword. The motion pushes Emma's tunic and chainmail up to her neck, exposing her pale stomach and the even paler skin of her breasts, cupped inside Claire's bra.

Claire smiles, and lowers her head.

 

Afterward, they sleep.

And Claire dreams.

 

There's a woman she can't quite see. She's in a room that's all shifting, filtered light, white and clear like the place Claire didn't exist when she was inside Castiel and he inside her.

The woman burns with gold. The gold is red-centered, like blood on fire. Not a crucifix but something nearly as familiar.

 _Claire_ , says the woman. _I welcome you._

Claire doesn't understand.

 _You are one of Mine_. _You bound yourself to Me._

I didn't bind myself to you, Claire says. I bound myself to Emma.

The fire ripples. _Do you think that there is a difference?_

I know there is.

The impression of laughter. Claire stands straight and recalls the weight of the angel blades on her arms.

 _Regardless_ , the voice says. _You saved one of Mine from the Fae's court. I would grant you a reward._

I don't want anything from you.

 _Are you sure?_ The flames shift. Seem to lick closer. _I could take you back to kill the fairy prince. He has not the strength his sire stole. No blood of an archangel._

No.

 _Pity_ , whispers the fire. _There is much the vessel of Castiel could do._

Castiel is human now, Claire says. You know that.

 _Perhaps_ , Harmonia says. _But you aren't, exactly, anymore. Are you?_

The fire stutters, and roars. And Claire feels that striding inside her again. The rhythm that draws her footsteps into it, like the gravity of a black hole pulling her into its well.  

_I'll be watching._

 

Claire opens her eyes.

 

Emma is asleep beside her. Her arm is slung out carelessly next to Claire's.

Their Marks are glowing.

 

 

 

 


End file.
